Vehicle headlights are designed to illuminate upcoming roadways in front of a driver. When roadways curve, the areas of the roadway around the curve are often left completely unlit and the effective visibility range of the driver becomes significantly shorter. For instance, if the roadway curves to the right with a radius of 50 m, a typical 30 m headlight will only illuminate 5-10 m of the roadway. Oncoming vehicles, pedestrians, animals, and other obstacles around the curve are not visible to the driver.
Some car manufacturers have attempted to improve headlights by introducing adaptive headlights and beam-shaping. Typically, adaptive headlights and beam-shaping use steering data from the vehicle. Current adaptive headlight technology improves the visibility, but only after the driver moves the steering wheel and the vehicle is already traveling in the curve. When the vehicle is already in the curve, the driver might not have enough time to react to an obstacle. Current adaptive headlight technology does not help when the vehicle is approaching, but has not yet reached, the curve.
It would be desirable to implement automatic beam-shaping using an on-car camera system.